Phyllis Schlafly’s Concentration Camp: [em]Uncomfortable?[/em]

Ginia Bellafante does one of those “home” stories that’s not really a home story but an interview with a famous person. Still, it’s pretty tantalizing. Phyllis Schlafly’s house looks like a nice hotel lobby. The office is on the second floor. That’s about what we know about the place.

But the money quote is this:

“I debated Friedan several times,” Mrs. Schlafly remarked. “She was always very ugly to deal with and debate, and made it clear that she hated me. I rejected all press calls to comment on her death; I’m not inclined to say critical things when somebody dies. Of course, I reject all her ideology, most of it based on the absurd notion that the home is a comfortable concentration camp and that the suburban housewife is oppressed by her husband and by society.”

So it is a home story, after all!

It’s a nice piece, actually, though I have to quibble with this line:

She breast-fed each child for six months, and home-schooled her four sons and two daughters through age 7.

Does that mean she “home-schooled” them until first grade? I think there’s an anachronism here. Even in New York, where cabals gather to decide the results of elections, those of us who grew up in the 1960’s and 1970’s know that many of us didn’t go to school till first grade; some people did Kindergarten for a half day, though attendance was spotty. And yet somehow I wouldn’t say I was “home-schooled through age 7.”